The Oral Reading Performance of a Second Grade Class Using an Informal Reading Test

Abstract

THE USE OF the informal reading inventory has been recommended as a clinical diagnostic proce dure and as a regular classroom teaching technique (1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 16). Socher (12) reported that a study using an informal reading inventory with upper elementary school children is currently being con ducted at Temple University. No r e s e arch during the period 1930-1959 using the informal reading in ventory as here proposed could be found by the au thor in the professional literature (13, 14, 15, 5). Sheldon and Hatch (9, 10, 11) and Hatch and Sheldon (7) compared the individual reading performances of groups of good and poor readers in grades 2, 3, 4 , and 6 as measured by the Durrell Analysis of Read ing Difficulty. They found that: a. Word by word reading was a common charac teristic in good and poor readers i n second grade, and a common characteristic of only poor readers in grades 3, 4, and 6. b. Poor or scanty unaided recall was common to both good and poor readers after oral and silent reading. c. At second grade level, both good and poor readers tend to ignore punctuation. d. At the second gradelevel the error occurring in the greatest number of cases was the substitution of whole words which were similar in form. e. Low sight vocabulary was a common charac teristic of poor readers in grades 2, 3, and 4. Six ty-eight percent of second grade pupils, 81% of third grade pupils, and 68% of fourth grade pupils classi fied as poor readers were reported as having low sight vocabularies. No percentages were given for the good readers. Characteristics were reported only when 50% of a group had the characteristic. Durrell (3) reports that the average reading rates for children examined at the Boston University Clin ic were 45 words per minute for first grade, 80 words per minute for second grade, and 110 words per minute for third grade. He does not report how this was measured. The purpose of this study was to record the oral reading performances of thirty-six second grade children in reading materials below grade level, at grade level, and above grade level, and to compare the oral performances of the good, average, and poor readers.